Here are some good maps showing all the different pathways your mind can travel through in search of the perfect conspiracy route that takes us around the world and back.
Here’s the second:
Taken from Seyfried
Thanks to German 102: Introductory German I, now I have the ammunition to hassle Swiss tourists, late at night, downtown when drunk!
It was 2.00 AM outside Waterfront when I espied this trio standing in front of a bus stop. Endeavouring to cut my cab expenditure prompted the following conversation:
Me: Hey buddy, what time’s the next bus?
Guy: No idea.
Me: Well, you’re at the bus stop, so just tell me, alright.
Girl #1: We have no idea.
Me: Alright, I’ll come check for myself.
Girl #2: No, you misunderstand, we don’t know, we’re not from here, we’re Swiss.
As soon as this permeated the sozzled layers of my consciousness, I realized here were three guinea pigs I could test my German skills on!
Me: Wie geht’s?
Guy: Sehr gut, danke.
Me: Wie heisst du?
Guy: Mark. Und du?
Me: Ich heisse Viren. Ich komme aus Burnaby. Und du?
Girl #1: Melissa
Me: Willkommen. Wie findest du Kanada?
…
And so on, I tried out snippets of everything I’d learned so far on the hapless trio, who were just waiting for a cab to take them back to their hotel.
I think they were glad to be rid of me once in the cab, but I had one final question to yell out:
Me: Which canton are you from?
Guy (craning his neck out the speeding cab): Luzerne!
So polite, you’ve got to admire the Swiss. Almost any other type of tourist would have told me to bugger off.
Some of you might remember the furore from the 70s and 80s when every worthless conservative parent who failed at bringing up their wretched spawn blamed rock n roll for the eventual spiritual and ethical demise of their child. The evidence: Backmasking!
Bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and AC/DC were supposed to corrupt the minds of youth by incorporating subliminal messages that only made sweet satanic sense when played backwards at certain speeds or what have you. And of course, we know that the average rock n roller from the 70s, when not sozzled with beer and/or fornicating his conjugal dipstick off, was a real electronics wizard, who could decode frequencies that played backwards on his trusty gramophone. Ozzy’s succinct defence: “Played backwards at 44 MHz and 78 RPM?? Do I look like a fucking scientist? I’m just Ozzy!”.
This ungodly trend thankfully only lasted until bands like Slayer came along who didn’t bother to backmask but openly worshipped Satan. Ah, anything for the glorious church burning heyday of metal. Take that, traditional power structures. Anyway, I digress.
Here is Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, reversed, and of course, sounding almost as wonderfully garbled as the original. You’d be hard pressed to find anything coherent in it, but if you do, drop me a line.
Why watch one movie at a time when you can watch two? You can also chat and just get so much more meaningless work done.
So, the new semester has begun at school. I’ve finished my science pre-requisites and all that’s left is a plethora of electives. The courses I’m in this term are:
GERM 102 – an Introduction to the German language for absolute beginners. No prior knowledge is permitted. Needless to say, this is my favorite course this term. “Wie geht’s? Sehr gut, danke” and all that jazz.
MATH 380 – History of Mathematics: We study Babylonian, Greek, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian math as practiced by the ancients. Gripping stuff, well, maybe not gripping, but certainly interesting considering all of this done was done 2500 years ago. So far, it seems like Euclid is the boss, simply lording it over all these smaller fish like Thales, Pythagoras and so on.
CMPT 320 – Social Implications of Computers: An absolute doozy. Supposedly an easy course, once again, I have the accursed ill luck to take it with a professor who takes its subject matter seriously. It even has a presentation. O tempora, O mores! Somewhat interesting so far, we’ve discussed the Unabomber Manifesto, and how can one not get excited when discussing homegrown terrorism at its finest.
A wise man once said that you could learn something from everything. So what can we learn from spam? Witty quotes and jokes that the random email generators grab from the base file, of course! Here are some nuggets I’ve received in my spam. Seriously, what is it with spammers’ obsession with Samuel Clemens?
Jokes:
Q: How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None: The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.Q: What is printed on the bottom of beer bottles in Minnesota?
A: Open other end.Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Fifteen. One to do it, and fourteen to write document number
GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility,
of which 10% of the pages state only “This page intentionally
left blank”, and 20% of the definitions are of the form “A:…..
consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks”.Q: How many elephants can you fit in a VW Bug?
A: Four. Two in the front, two in the back.Q: How can you tell if an elephant is in your refrigerator?
A: There’s a footprint in the mayo.Q: How can you tell if two elephants are in your refrigerator?
A: There’s two footprints in the mayo.Q: How can you tell if three elephants are in your refrigerator?
A: The door won’t shut.Q: How can you tell if four elephants are in your refrigerator?
A: There’s a VW Bug in your driveway.Q: How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a
light bulb?
A: Seven. Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in
the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send
Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he’ll immediately claim
that he’s a doctor, not an electrician). Scotty, after checking
around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains
that he “canna” see in the dark. Kirk will make an emergency stop at
the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb
from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something.
Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers
beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promply
killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured.
As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand,
Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must
warp out of orbit. Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon
and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have
just saved the natives’ from an awful fate and, as a reward, been
given all light bulbs they can carry. The new bulb is then inserted
and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb
itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
maudlin cosmos of nothingness.Q: “What is the burning question on the mind of every dyslexic
existentialist?”
A: “Is there a dog?”Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: You won’t find a lawyer who can change a light bulb. Now, if
you’re looking for a lawyer to screw a light bulb…Q: How many Bell Labs Vice Presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That’s proprietary information. Answer available from AT&T on payment
of license fee (binary only).Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.Q: What’s the difference between the 1950’s and the 1980’s?
A: In the 80’s, a man walks into a drugstore and states loudly, “I’d
like some condoms,” and then, leaning over the counter, whispers,
“and some cigarettes.”Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot
to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer prize for
reporting that Electric Company hired a light bulb-assassin to break
the bulb in the first place.
Witty Quotes:
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
– William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
– Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar”The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what
you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.
– Mark TwainTraining is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is
nothing but cabbage with a college education.
– Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar”The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
– Mark TwainBe careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
– Mark TwainI have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
– Mark TwainApril 1
This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three
hundred and sixty-four.
– Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar”
And eerily enough, the last one was this:
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
this sort of trash.
Who would have ever thought spam could make you laugh. Some of those are genuinely hilarious! Or maybe I’m just easily amused. I received over 439 spam mails in 2 days, these snippets above represent but a fraction of what resides in my inbox. Remember kids, your inbox can be your very own bash.org without a spam filter.
What a movie! Lip smackingly sublime. Chris Gardner is the stuff real heroes are made of. Nevermind any movies about costumed clowns with supernatural powers, watch this movie for a taste of the sterner stuff real life heroes are driven by. Will Smith is excellent in his role as the beleaguered father working two jobs trying to succeed at his dreams. His son, played by his real life son is superb as well.
I don’t feel like giving away any spoilers, so just watch this one for yourselves. It should move you, hell, it moved me, and that’s a big deal. Pay for it, download it, use whatever method to procure it, but see it as soon as possible.
Oh my! What manner of creature do we have here? Of all the bastard hybrids that could exist, this one easily takes the cake for being the cheesiest. Intertwining lyrics from Metallica to music by the Beatles, with a dash of Hetfield’s gravelly voice on top. Song names incorporate hideous puns, as in ‘The Thing That Should Not Let It Be’ and so on. The music is decent, check them out if you like Weird Al or S.O.D. or other parody bands.
“Is this really the right way to head to Number 1?”
“Hey, that’s a very diplomatic way of telling me I’m going in the right direction, thanks”
It is 4.40 am on Jan 1st, 2007 and we are hurtling in a rusty compact car down Vancouver’s slippery streets as it pours. Our impromptu taxi driver is a Music graduate student who’s taped a sign that says “Taxi: By Donation ONLY” to his rear window and is making a few extra bucks on New Year’s Eve. Quite the entrepreneurial spirit. The “Donation ONLY” bit is to avoid any legalities associated with charging people a fixed rate and thus avoiding the hassle of having a taxi license altogether, he informs us over and over again. We have no problem with that, we’re glad he picked us up outside the Denny’s on Davie. He talks a lot about how he hopes our dreams will come true, nay, “made manifest”. That is an oft-repeated phrase during the entire cab ride. So much so that I have an intense desire to pistol whip the next person who utters that particular phrase.
My friend M has just finished puking her guts up for the twelfth time in a row. We are at Denny’s at 3.20 am. My other friend C is snoring lightly on my shoulder. As I tuck into my Smoked Sausage Scramble, I mutter, “Ah, that’s a shame”. The girl opposite me is not sure if “wrathful” is a word in the lexicon and I’m taking great pains to assure her that it is, in between great mouthfuls of sausage and egg.
My friend is in the bedroom of the hotel room with two men at 1.20 am and the door is slowly closing. Is she enjoying this or is it entrapment? I shrug and decide to let her sort it out. We are all adults after all. It is a hotel room on the 12th floor of a hotel on Davie, rented out by my friend’s friends to usher in the New Year with excessive alcohol, cigarettes and everything everyone needs for a good time. I’ve been having a good night. The music is your typical dance fare, the women are ghoulishly attractive in the dim light, the view is excellent and the booze flows freely. I’m giving free rein to my impressions of people around me and the people listening to me are laughing. I meet Dave, the only other humanist I know and we discuss ‘Catch 22′ and grok ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’.
It is 12.00 am and the New Year is being celebrated with the Serbian national anthem. There has been an abundance of Serbian folk music. Only then do we realize that there is a total of 7 non-Serbians at this party. Oh well, hooray for multiculturalism. If only we could do something about those silent j’s. Some guy with a crazy hairdo and very flexible body is hogging the dance floor while everyone oohs and aahs at his moves. I’m dying to yawn but it would be too rude. After all, we didn’t even pay cover.
We’ve just finished bowling. There are fifteen people in our posse. Additionally, my best friend is leaving forever in a few days and it is rather depressing. But the beer is terrible and we are joking about how bad the beer is. I am not doing well at 5 pin bowling. Heather wins every round and has also consumed the entire pitcher of beer. Perhaps the two are interrelated. A girl has been puking for an hour and a half. It is 10 pm. I think she pre-drank a bit too much. It will all work out eventually.
It is 7 pm and Tyler and I are meeting Heather at the skytrain station. She has an entire bag full of extras for the night. She is well prepared. We are not so well prepared. On the skytrain, we meet the friend of the guy who took my friend home last night at the bar. He is drinking a macedoine of alcoholic beverages from a Pepsi can wrapped in an A&B Sound plastic bag. He is already buzzed and our New Year’s Eve night is underway.